Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928

another example of citizen justice

one man with a gun saving his town from thugs

George Zimmerman, another man with a gun who invoked the Stand-Your-Ground Law to justify killing Trayvon Martin--an unarmed teen carrying Skittles

Ruby Ridge--from all reports a major cock-up by gov't law officials* also from Wikii: On about August 24, 1992, the fourth day of the siege on the Weaver family, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson wrote a memo:
OPR 0044771. Charge against Weaver is Bull Shit.

Marissa Alexander 31-year-old mother of 2 small children, fired warning shot at abusive husband, hitting wall behind his head, sentenced in Florida to 20 years. A jury found her guilty as charged: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

This is horrible. Kafkaesque. I woke up with a sudden
realization—I’m not a bug. Much worse. I am middle-aged.

I expected to feel this way after my parent’s death early
last year. I’ve been feeling slower, not as enthusiastic about exercise—something
I never went two days in a row without doing. I wouldn’t get into running shoes
for anything less than 5 miles. But I suspect it wasn’t this that nudged me
into melancholy.

Perhaps when a friend mentioned he was having cataract surgery.
What! No worries, he responded, it’s outpatient! Or when a Facebook friend from
highschool announced that he was retiring from teaching at the end of the
school year. Congratulations! Or that a good friend, even younger than I, was
gifted with their first grandchild. Mazel tov!

These are significant milemarkers. We gauge how far we’ve
come and where we might be going next.

Where are we going
next?

I think what I’m feeling is a brittleness, a great
uncertainty. That what I once thought might not actually happen has happened.
My husband and I are finding ourselves often sleepless, fearful of the future.
This confession in itself is middle-aged. I can’t remember once worrying about
social security when I was 30. Really. Mostly when I was younger, I
worried I might not have time for all the things I wanted to do like graduate
from high school, college, get married, have kids, go to Europe.

The sun rose and set, and I graduated, got married, had the
daughter I dreamed of, we’ve traveled (See
European Schedule).

In my thirties I began to worry about my friends. Would we
finish the journey we began together? Then in my forties several of the people
I’d gotten closest to moved away. All the promises about raising kids together,
being there for one another collapsed under other obligations, other visions. Quite
a few divorces, a few have shocked me. The kids have lost touch with each
other, finding little in common. A few of those bright beautiful children of my
friends have passed away.

Here we are now, middle-aged. We stuck it out. Yet we are
wide-awake.

And I suspect we are not alone. There are teachers and
firefighters wondering if their pension will evaporate. All of us are concerned
that social security will become a bone thrown to placate those wishing for A
BALANCED BUDGET. That, along with raising the minimum age for Medicare, we will
be toothless and decrepit before eligibility. Brittle and broken.

I see it all around me, safety nets unraveling. The seniors
we serve at Friendly
Towers (http://www.friendlytowers.com/) and the epidemic
rise in elderly homeless especially at CCO (http://www.ccolife.org/). Many of these people lived
lives with few expectations anyway, on the margins. But now they are
discovering that even the bare basics are not going to be enough. SSI, Social
Security, a monthly pension will not magically make affordable housing appear,
re-instate food stamps mysteriously revoked, or cover the ever-increasing
co-pays. Then there are the constant scams.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

My friend and underground street photographer, Fred
Burkhart is having a gallery opening tomorrow, January 18 at Alibi Fine Art
here in Chicago
(1966 West Montrose Avenue Chicago, IL 60613). I met Fred a few years ago
and I can truly say he has opened my eyes. I see things differently.

Also he wears hats.

Some of Fred’s most controversial subjects has been an
intimate portrait of members of the KKK and chronicling Chicago's Gay Pride
Parade since its beginning. In addition he is the house photographer for JesusPeople USA a 350-member community on the northside of Chicago. He is one of ours.

**He says decisions about what he photographed never felt
deliberate. “Photography is a collaboration, and sometimes it’s not on the
surface. When you fall in love with someone, you know it, pow. You’re choosing
each other, and there’s a certain trust there. When you photograph them, people
hand you their image…”

Now in his 71st year Fred is winding down. He has
Stage 4 cancer and this, his first-ever show, might well be his very last. If in the area please
come out to the gallery.

ALSO check out this video recently completed about Fred by
Heather Momyer, in which I am found testifying as to who Fred is—to me.

Quote from Fred’s Facebook about
the video: This video touches on what is so important and life-changing about
my evolution as a photographer, how it's brought me at last close to a
community that I can identify with -- a community that I can love and share a
common thread with: We are born here of God and that's the necessary incentive
to tag tag my photos as “Images of God.”

"You say goodbye and I say hello", by Fred
Burkhart, a photo from his first-ever gallery show

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

There was a time when we were so poor we had no debit card,
no bank account. If we lost our token to ride the L we just jumped the turnstile.
More than once we had to walk when the buses stopped running—miles from home.
One time we were stranded at Cook
County Hospital
without a quarter between us to call a friend for a pick up. With our treat
money we used to buy a quart of the cheapest ice cream and saw through the
carton, splitting it in half. Going out to eat was getting a dollar slice at
Uptown. We didn’t do that too often. Usually we shopped at the Freestore and
ate donos, donated day-old doughnuts. On our day off we’d go to the No Exit Café
off the Morse L stop for half-price coffee and bad poetry. We’d leave smelling
like cigarette smoke. In the cold, crystallized air halos wavered around the
street lamps, and we’d hold hands—so happy, so blessed.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

I’ve written quite a bit here at Memoirous about being a
content hack. Not really—though that’s how it feels, sometimes.

My last post and this one are about process. An attempt at
clarifying or explaining to myself what it is I do. I am honored to once again
receive a grant from the Illinois Arts council, but along with awards comes a
tandem inferiority complex. Do I actually deserve this? Is it a fluk—an accident—and
will be withdrawn once “they” discover I am a charlatan?

These emotions (or is it faulty reasoning? Either way I am
convinced), by the way, are NOT helpful to the process.

I’ve been writing since age 7. Even before I acquired
reading, I wrote in a code—hoping later to remember what those little symbols
stood for. I desperately wanted to write a story. I believe my first poem was
about a tree. It was wonderful! I was at the same time delighted to discover
that many words rhyme with tree. The symbol for tree was very literal—it was
more difficult finding the appropriate sign to represent the “filler” words,
the ones that connected the visual ones.

I continue to have problems with those. I have the nut of
what I am trying to say. Adding leaves to the tree and making it look, well,
like a tree is the hard part.

So since age 7 writing has been my identity. Writing things
down helps me to remember, record (journaling), and process life. Writing has
helped to nourish me and as I feed it.

I’ve been reading Susan Sontag’s journal/notebook As
Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh 19640 1980. True much of what she says can
be reduced—she seems to take the hard way around a subject. Is that convoluted?
But she is very logical, which makes the path easier. She has random riffs on
writing—always seeing it as an art form. That’s very encouraging.

Because technology seems to have rendered much of today’s
art into content. Content, a word devoid of art. Content sounds so—utilitarian,
a means to an end, an end to a mean. As someone who blogs I am constantly aware
that I need stuff to make it happen. Often, to enhance a post, I’ll go on-line
and “borrow” a photograph or download a video. Some bloggers embed music—a blog
soundtrack—borrowed from the WORLD WIDE WORLD. It’s out there, all of it,
anything we want. Photos, music, clips, snips, content. And, it has very little
value.

Musicians are poorer today than ever before. Who now can
actually make it in the arts—when much of the arts is considered FREE. Granted
much, much, much more work is getting out there, being seen, going viral.

I love the www, the internet. My question is what’s next?
How will the next generation of artists get funding—because even commercial
artists are scraping by and mainstream publishers (please God!) are just now
realizing that hefty advances to known celebrities are not paying out. Things
go away to come back as something else—or they used to. But, maybe with global
warming, they will simply go extinct. Exist in a Wii world, inside a game.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Okay, this is by all accounts crazy, like jet propulsion--or in view of the Christian calendar--the opposite of "ordinary" time, sonic time. I submitted a flash and five minutes later it was accepted and within the hour posted here.

The piece was totally spun from my head. I had the idea one EARLY morning (I am a morning cook and am up before EVERYONE) while listening to the radio. I just imagined a woman, I imagined her on her birthday, then I imagined her sorry life and the tenets or cords that hold that fragile life together, the moral of the story. And coupled those thoughts with twilight, or those periods when the sun has not come out all day, like living in a fog or swimming underwater. My thoughts flitted and spun as if turning somersaults--without the heaviness of gravity. This is what I wrote about. Sort of. What came out might not at all have been what I was actually thinking, but the result of eating too much popcorn the night before.

Nevertheless--a flash. I am scheduled to deliver a lecture at OCWW March 14th on writing flash memoir--come join us. If you click on the link my program might not be listed yet, but keep checking back.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

"When big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning."--in a letter from Melville to Hawthorne

That's what I'm about. This next year I want to have a big heart, go bold, be not afraid. I also like the part about striking together. I'm tired of the little jingles, the sound barely heard above the din around me. I want to ring out--and to accomplish this I might have to find similar hearts willing to sound together.

Interestingly enough, Melville penned this letter on the cusp of launching Moby-Dick--a book that would ultimately sink his career. No one knew what to do with that book. It was like none other, and thus fell off the charts.

Fantastic Resource!

NEW!!! e-book edition

eBook Edition Has bonus Material

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Quick Bio

Jane Hertenstein is the author of Home is Where We Live: Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl’s Eyes (picture book), Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady (with Marie James), and Beyond Paradise (YA fiction). See BOOKS
She has taught mini courses in memoir at the university level as well as seminars at Cornerstone Festival, Prairie School of Writing. Jane is listed on the Illinois Artists Roster. Roster Artists are certified by the Illinois Arts Council to work in public schools introducing young people to the arts. She lives in Chicago where she facilitates a “happening” critique group.